Alzheimer's Center receives $4.4 million NIH grant
renewal

Thanks to a $4.4 million National Institutes of Health grant renewal,
investigators at the Alz-heimer's Disease Center (ADC) based at the School of
Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) will be able to further
expand the rich base of research, treatment and education programs they have
fostered over the past five years. The additional federal funds support the ADC
through the year 2001.

"Since its inception in October of 1991, the Emory ADC has fulfilled its
initial goal of supporting and stimulating Alzheimer's disease research at
Emory," said ADC principal Investigator and Director Suzanne S. Mirra,
professor of pathology at the School of Medicine. "The extraordinary growth of
the basic and clinical neuroscience community at Emory has only increased the
need for the core support provided by the center."

The impact of the ADC on the scientific community and the community-at-large
has been substantial and varied. Activities of the center include connecting
every second-year Emory medical student with the family of an individual with
Alzheimer's disease, looking for Alzheimer's genes, maintaining an active
"brain bank" of tissue available for study, presenting puppet shows on the
condition to children, studying the effects of estrogen on Alzheimer's disease
progression, and recruiting junior investigators to the field through pilot
project grants.

A significant contribution of the ADC to the field of Alzheimer's disease
research has been its emphasis on the investigation and treatment of the
disease in African-Americans. Emory neurologists evaluate and treat patients at
an urban satellite clinic; pathologists characterize brain tissue from older
African Americans with and without Alzheimer's disease; ADC staff provide
multicultural symposia on Alzheimer's disease to the public; and they have
organized an annual high school career day emphasizing exposure of minority
students to career opportunities in the Alzheimer's disease field.

"Representation of minority patients increased from 6 percent to 29 percent
over the past four years as a result of recruitment of African American
subjects through our Satellite Clinic," Mirra said. "The high proportion of
African Americans seen through the Clinical Core, paralleling that of our
regional population, will enable us to obtain much needed information on
dementia in this understudied group."

Two additional research themes have emerged from the ADC; one focuses on
common threads among movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease and
dementias such as Alzheimer's; the other evaluates the mitochondrial genetics
of these disorders.

"In a setting of quality patient care, family support and education, the
Clinical Core will provide (to investigators) information on well characterized
groups of Alzheimer's disease patients, Parkinson's disease patients with and
without dementia, and normal individuals free of cognitive and motor
impairment," said ADC Associate Director Mahlon DeLong, chair of Neurology at
Emory and an international expert on movement disorders.

The Molecular Biology core will assess mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) abnormalities
associated with Alzheimer's disease and aging, and will screen for mutations
known to be associated with early-onset familial and late-onset Alzheimer's
disease.